The Human Experiment

Many of the social issue documentaries that attract the
greatest attention—think “An Inconvenient Truth” or “Bowling for Columbine” —combine
focused subjects with authorial points of view that are distinctive, forceful
and individual. Don Hardy and Dana Nachman’s “The Human Experiment” lacks these
qualities. Its subject, the threat of manufactured chemicals in the
environment, is a sprawling, amorphous one. And though Sean Penn
executive-produced the film and voices its spare narration, the doc has a very
generic tone, so much so that it might seem to belong on TV rather than in
theaters.

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Yet these characteristics do not fatally undermine the film,
which gradually marshals its arguments and evidence in such a way that it ends
being compelling and illuminating for viewers who are more interested in useful
information than artful presentation.

Most people will approach the film having heard that concern
over chemicals in the environment has grown in the last couple of decades as
their mounting use has been paralleled by dramatic rises in maladies ranging
from birth defects to various cancers to autism. There’s not just a handful of
such chemicals setting off alarm bells; there are hundreds. The illnesses
they’re linked to are also legion, while the connections between them are
sometimes more strongly circumstantial than fully established.

“The Human Experiment” starts out by sketching in the range
of these phenomena via interviews with people who’ve had medical problems that
are thought to be chemically related and doctors who’ve been studying them. The
narrative soon enough turns to the economic and political forces behind the
overall situation.

These chemicals came into the environment, of course,
because they were profitable for the companies that marketed them. Any that
preceded the first efforts at government regulation were effectively
“grandfathered in” so that their use couldn’t be challenged, and newer ones
were introduced without full-scale testing or oversight. Then, when
environmentalists began probing their links to various problems, the companies
put profits before public safety, throwing up p.r. smokescreens aimed at
inhibiting public awareness and government action.

The game plan they followed was the one used so successfully
for decades by the tobacco industry (and probed in greater detail in Robert
Kenner’s “Merchants of Doubt”): from sewing doubt about the actual science to
creating their own bogus data and “experts,” the companies positioned
themselves as champions of personal liberty, saying that using their products—no
matter how questionable—was a matter of individual choice. Needless to say,
they were simultaneously able to throw tons more money into lobbying than their
opponents were.

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One example of how this worked is explored in the case of
flame retardants used on fabrics and other materials. In 1975, California
passed a law requiring their use. In recent years, as the chemicals in
retardants were shown to be environmentally hazardous and their effectiveness
in preventing fire deaths was questioned, a group called Citizens for Fire
Safety began running ads advocating their continued use as a way of protecting
children—a seemingly laudable goal. Yet the group was not the grassroots
activists organization it appeared to be but a front created by the American
Chemical Association. Eventually, the ruse was exposed and efforts to change
California’s law succeeded.

For much of its length, “The Human Experiment” can feel
repetitious, as we see a succession of blandly-shot talking heads discoursing
on one chemically-related problem after another. Of course, autism and breast
cancer are very different sorts of problems, but the film’s treatment of them
effectively just adds them to a long list of ailments that scientists have
linked to environmental causes. Yet in its last third, the film moves from
presenting the problems to showing how there is movement toward solving some of
them—a movement with notable developments on two fronts.

At the international level, Europe has taken the lead in
restricting environmental hazards and requiring chemical companies to prove the
safety of their products before they are introduced. These policies have been
studied by many non-European countries, with the result that their model has
taken hold in nations as far-flung and environmentally crucial as India and
China. And you can bet some Americans are startled to learn China has certain
environmental protections that are better than those in the U.S.

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But there’s movement in America too, much of it on the state
and local levels. That’s where “The Human Experiment” become most engaging: by
showing how a lot of ordinary Americans in diverse locales get concerned about
these problems—often by being affected by them personally—then educate
themselves and start working with friends and neighbors and sympathetic
lawmakers to change the relevant laws.

It’s a heartening example of democracy in action. Spreading
awareness of the problems and their potential solutions is a big part of the
process, and in that sense, “The Human Experiment” itself will be a useful tool
for those involved in these multi-pronged battles.